


The Other Jane

by yukiawison



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Jane Eyre references, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 00:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5607445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yukiawison/pseuds/yukiawison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam reads Jane Eyre.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Jane

"Hey, you want pancakes?" Ronan was already turning on the burner.

"You make pancakes?" Adam mumbled distractedly. Adam was propped up on the couch, sleep clouded eyes focused on his book. It was Jane Eyre, he'd been reading bits of it aloud last night. Ronan could tell Parrish saw something of himself in the poor, neglected, but stubborn orphan with a razor wit.

"You doubt me Adam Parrish?"

"No, actually I don't." He thought about a happier, littler Ronan making pancakes with his mom.

Ronan cracked an egg into his pancake mix and grabbed a spoon.

"You really like that book don't you?" Adam hadn't moved from his place on the couch, nose buried in his book.

"It's beautiful, listen: 'He is not to them what he is to me, I thought: he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine- I am sure he is- I feel akin to him- I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him.'" He looked up expectantly, sleepy hint of a smile on his lips. He wouldn't say it out loud, because it would be dorky as fuck, but it sounded a little like them.

"Come here, they're almost ready." Ronan flipped another pancake and slid it onto the plate he'd designated for Adam.

Adam sat down at the table, setting aside the papers Gansey had splayed across it. "Aren't you going to have some?" He asked, as Ronan set down the plate and handed him a bottle of syrup.

"I want to hear what you think first," he replied, taking the seat across from him, and handing him a cup of coffee.

Adam watched Ronan watch him, eyes eager though he was trying to hide it. He cared, a lot, and Adam knew he had to tell him.

"It's great Ronan," he said softly.

"But?" Ronan's eyes narrowed.

"But what?"

"You look upset Parrish. I know that face. What is it?"

"I got into Columbia," Adam muttered.

"What?" Ronan's face lit up. Adam had slaved over that application, reading it aloud multiple times in his tired twang to check for grammatical errors and make endless adjustments as Gansey or Ronan or Blue put in their input. He'd applied for 17 scholarships, stayed up all night, laughed hysterically on the couch at 2 a.m. when he crashed from his caffeine high and Ronan told dirty jokes. Columbia was the reason Adam came home from work with sore joints and tired bones. Columbia was everything.

"That's fucking amazing Adam! Congratulations," Ronan leaned across the table to kiss him.

"I've got a full ride, with scholarships and financial aid," he breathed. "I did it."

"Then why are you looking at me like that?"

Adam was a little breathless, but he collected himself, setting down his fork. "New York is pretty damn far," his voice cracked despite of himself.

Ronan felt a hazy underwater sensation, like Cabeswater was trying to talk to him for once. It was like it was asking him to make Adam stay.

Adam wondered, for a moment, why in hell it was like this. The one thing he thought he knew, was that there would be no missing Henrietta. No home to come back to. No someone who made his teeth grind and throat ache when he thought about leaving him behind.

I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.

"It is far Parrish," he said at last. "I'm glad Aglionby taught you how to read a map." He tried to keep his tone light but it came out more bitter than he'd intended. He looked down, not wanting Adam to see the discouragement on his face.

"Ronan..."

I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.

"Look, I didn't think about what we'd...I couldn't think about..." Ronan trailed off. In truth, it was hard for him to see anything of a future after his dad died. When his family fell apart, his future blurred like the edges of a dream. Fate was too cruel to make something of Ronan Lynch.

"I don't know what we'll do, but I thought we better talk about it." The pancakes were cold now.

"Talk about it?" He scoffed. "Adam are you breaking up with me?" Because that's what it looked like: Adam's face drawn and tense, his long fingers twitching around his coffee cup, eyes full of something Ronan couldn't name.

"No, God no Ronan that's not what I mean," He looked up at him wide eyed. "No Ronan I was trying to tell you that I love you, and that I want you to come with me. I just know that's a lot to ask and..." His heart was thumping harder than the bass when Ronan turned the radio up in the BMW. He'd put this off, and now it was happening.

"You love me?" Ronan breathed. "How the hell do you love me?"

All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.

"I don't know how. I don't think you can even ask how. I just know I do. And I want us...Jesus I guess I don't even know if you feel the same way. I mean this," he gestured between them. "Has been so good, and I feel like..."

"Adam I made you breakfast."

He looked down at the plate, confused. "And...?"

"And I haven't made breakfast for anyone since I was a kid Parrish," he looked down. "I don't want to lose you, because I love you...and I don't have a future without you," he muttered.

"What do you mean? You could have any future you wanted."

"You mean I could buy any future."

Adam shrugged. "What future would you buy?"

Ronan was going to say that any future with Adam was fine with him, that he'd be content to follow him to school and anywhere else Adam wanted to go. But that was pathetic, even if Adam said he loved him now that didn't mean they were going to be together after a month of hot college Adam with hot college guys (and girls). Hot college guys and girls who were smart and studious and on the up and up like Adam.

"Well?" Adam was looking at him expectantly, painfully with that tight jaw and worried eyebrows that furrowed together.

I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment.

"You don't want me to come with you," Ronan said darkly.

"I think I know what I want," Adam replied. And it took a lot to say it, because Adam Parrish never knew what he wanted. This, he was sure, was what he wanted.

"C'mon don't you want to be single in college?" Ronan replied. So you can meet people who don't destroy things with their dreams, he didn't add. "You can meet some gorgeous intellectual you can discuss the fucking Brönte sisters with."

"I want you," Adam shot back. "And if you don't want to come with me because you want to stay here or go somewhere else or whatever then fine, I understand. But if this is some bullshit inferiority complex I don't want to hear it."

It's better if we break up now, less complicated, less painful than miles away from Monmouth and fresh cooked pancakes. We'd save a lot of trouble if we just...

Adam kissed him, soft and sweet and slow. It reminded him of the first time, when they were both nervous and scared and Adam pulled away too quickly because he needed to see Ronan's reaction before he got too invested: "I was worried I'd done it wrong, and that I wasn't all you thought I'd be."

"We can get an apartment near campus. I've uh," Adam flushed. "Been looking at some." It wasn't as if he'd planned everything around Ronan. He still had a spot in the dorms if he wanted it.

Ronan shook his head. "I can't do this right now. I have to go."

"Wait, don't..."

He got up quickly, brushing a hand through his hair that had started to grow back.

"Ronan," Adam started, but he was gone: out the door and down the street in the BMW, on the way to the Barns most likely.

Adam tried to breathe. He was prepared for this. He was prepared to lose the home he had. He was used to life without a home.

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

"Are you alright Adam? Where's Ronan?" Gansey yawned. His hair was ruffled and his glasses were on.

"He left," Adam muttered.

Gansey pulled open the fridge and reached for the orange juice.

"When's he coming...?"

"I got into Columbia."

Gansey's face lit up. He set the juice down and put his arms around him, holding him tightly. "Congratulations! You did it Adam." Adam smiled into his chest.

He pulled away, eyes looking misty. "So you're leaving. It's all happening."

Adam nodded, eyes focused on his pancakes. Gansey was leaving too, for Cambridge at the end of the summer. Adam suspected his polos would be more comfortable over there. Though Blue's knitted sweaters and colorful pins she was always giving him might be lonely. Blue had promised to call, daily between her classes on marine wildlife and environmental engineering, and he'd bought her plane tickets to slip into his goodbye letter.

"Is that what you two were talking about?"

Everyone had a plan but Ronan. Ronan had been waiting and now it was the time to decide.

He sighed. "Is it crazy if I ask him to come with me?" He looked at Gansey, standing contemplatively in his pajamas. Henrietta was his home. In his endless travels he'd finally found a place he didn't want to let go. But he was, he was moving on though it was difficult. With, and only with this caveat did things fall into place: he had resolved to come back after school, when his mind was full and he could do whatever the hell he wanted and spend every day driving with Blue, or holding her hand, or dreaming up on the mountain tops. He was tearing himself from home, but not from her.

"No, well maybe a little. It's not the craziest thing we've been subject to," he picked up Adam's book and read the title.

"I've never read Jane Eyre, is it any good?"

Adam smiled slightly. "Yeah, I bet your Jane would like it."

Now, and things were so different back then he wasn't sure he'd ever get to say this, but learning was fun. He didn't have to read for his life anymore. It wasn't a way out because he was already out. He didn't have to study in fear anymore.

"Well I know it's going to work out, no matter what you and Ronan decide."

"You think so?" Adam asked weakly.

"I know so," he grinned. "And hey, we should celebrate. How about tomorrow night at Nino's?"

"Sure."

***  
The Barns still had a dreamlike quality about it, the house full of dream objects was perpetually in a nostalgic haze.

Ronan walked about, running his fingers over a music box that played different songs every time you opened it, lamps that burned brightly without bulbs, and a number of oddly shaped bottles of dream perfume that Niall Lynch often concocted for his wife (cinnamon and lavender and rain, a mixture of scents that didn't fit but somehow made sense in the tall elegant bottles the greywaren brought home.)

His father had dreamed up so much, dreamed a life and a family. What had Ronan dreamed? Monsters? Car keys? A brother whose smile was like sunshine? What else did he need? What did he want besides Adam Parrish?

He should've thought more about the future, everyone was headed their separate ways and he was what? Going to stay in Henrietta for the rest of his life? He was trapped like Noah in a home where he'd outstayed his welcome.

The look on Adam's face said he was sincere, that he wanted Ronan there with him. He wanted to work it out, wanted to find a way they could both be happy and together and whole. And Adam hadn't had whole in a long time. He didn't have a whole house or whole hearing or a whole night's sleep.

But it scared Ronan shitless. He could lose him, and it could hurt a lot. Adam could lose himself in the newness of it all and find that he didn't want Ronan.

But he didn't want to lose the magician, not when it had taken so long to get him.

It was getting dark. It was time to face him.

He drove to St. Agnes, and knocked on the door a little louder than he'd hoped.

"Ronan?" He still had that book in his hand, dangling and dog eared. Worse, he was wearing one of Ronan's tee shirts.

"I'm sorry, can I come in?"

"Yeah, of course." It was late, past 1 a.m. But neither of them cared much for sleep.

"I didn't mean to run out on you like that," he mumbled, once the silence had stretched long enough to make them both nervous. "I was just..."

"Look," Adam said. "It's not an ultimatum," he accent was particularly strong now. That happened when he was anxious. "We can stay together, even if you stay here. We'll make long distance work. I'll call you and visit. I want it to work, even if you don't want to come with me. I know it's a lot to ask. I'm just not ready for us to be done."

Adam looked at him, trying to glean some kind of reaction. Ronan looked down, and then, with a deep breath, met his gaze.

The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye.

"I want to come with you Parrish, I'm just scared you're going to dump my ass and I'm going to be stranded in the city."

Adam thought for a minute. It was valid, though he had no intention of breaking up with Ronan it was riskier when it was a big city, when they lived together and everything was heightened. The world pulsed electrically beyond the confines of Henrietta, and not in the way the ley lines pulsed. This wasn't the mystic or the slow and strange, it was the quick city: crowded streets and bright lights.

"I don't intend to. I don't think I'll ever want us to end," Adam drawled. "And that's all I can tell you right now Lynch."

"Can I stay the night Parrish?" He asked softly. "And decide in the morning?"

Adam nodded. "Come to bed." Ronan was tired, all the running around, the stress had drained him.

They curled up as they usually did: Ronan's back pressed up against Adam's chest, his arms curled protectively around Ronan. In the beginning it was like he was clinging to him for safety. He'd have nightmares from time to time, and wake up shaking or screaming, and curling into Ronan. He'd always apologize when he came to, stuttering and tearful despite himself. He wasn't the one who pulled monsters out of his dreams; he wasn't the one who should be apologizing.

Now his grip was softer, arms draped lazily over him, chin tucked over his shoulder, their legs tangled together. Adam kissed the back of his neck. "I love you," he sighed sleepily. "Goodnight."

"I love you too Parrish."

That night he dreamed of Cabeswater, with Adam in the thick of it. He was covered in roots and vines. Leaves snaked up his arms and flowers sprouted around his collarbone (daisies and marigolds.) he was reaching out to him with mossy fingertips and whispered Latin, pulling him closer with the magic of it all.

When he woke up they were face to face. Adam was still asleep, his breath soft. He'd grown since Ronan had known him, longer legs and a stronger jaw that had its gentle moments when he smiled at Blue or kissed him. And he'd grown on the inside too, when he thought about it. He was still stubborn but not stiflingly so. He was more confident too, when his accent became prominent he didn't flush with shame, and he was getting better at letting people in (letting people know the unknowable Adam Parrish.)

There was a flower in Ronan's hand, a remnant of the dream world that rested soft and fragrant on his fingers.

Adam opened his eyes. "Hey, you been awake long?"

"I want to go with you."

He blinked, eyes still bleary with sleep. "You do?"

Ronan nodded, and his chest felt tight with anxiety or excitement (it was hard to tell.)

Adam grinned. "Well we've got a lot of work to do then Lynch."

***

"Adam, over here!" Gansey called to him from their usual booth. Blue was beside him but she jumped up when Adam came in.

"I just heard," she threw her arms around him. "Columbia, that's great Adam. I'm proud of you." He let himself feel it for a minute, all the joy and all the sadness of leaving her and Gansey and Noah in a few short months. Then he sucked it up. Sadness was for a later date.

When she pulled away she was smiling, but kind of teary eyed, he pretended he didn't see. Ronan and Adam slid in beside Noah.

"What the hell is this?" Ronan asked, looking critically at the mass of icing that appeared to have a cake under of it.

"It's a cake," Blue shot back. "A cake we made that you're going to eat and like it," she crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at him menacingly.

She was wearing one of Gansey's polos, aqua, Ronan thought it would be listed in a catalogue as, with the collar flared out and a knitted sweater in a mishmash of different yarn over top of it. She had taken to wearing his clothes now that they were dating, of course adding a bit of her peculiar Blue Sargent charm.

"It looks beautiful Blue," Noah said, and Ronan wasn't surprised considering the cake was coated in glittery sprinkles.

"Thank you Noah," she replied.

"Have you two decided?" Gansey was wearing his glasses, and a scarf Blue has quite obviously made for him. He was looking exceedingly bohemian nowadays.

"I'm going with him," Ronan said.

"You two, in New York?" Blue was beaming.

"I'd say that's something to celebrate," Gansey said. "Noah, would you like to do the honors?" He handed him a knife, Noah was almost completely flesh looking, as if the happiness of his friends (family) was fueling him as much as Blue's charging presence.

Blue ordered them some fries and soda because today was most certainly not a real food day.

And they talked, a little about the future, and a lot about the past. The glittery cake soon disappeared, Gansey offered waitresses pieces of it when they went on break. And Blue smiled, and linked her hand in his and Adam leaned his head on Ronan's shoulder, watching Noah as he tried to freak people out by moving plates around.

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

***

"So what are we watching?" Blue seemed more invested in checking on the cookies than watching a movie.

"Jane Eyre," Adam said, sliding in beside Ronan on the couch.

"What is it with you two?" He sighed.

"The 2011 movie and the 2007 BBC mini series," Blue added.

"Both?" Ronan asked, eyes narrowing.

"2011 has Michael Fassbender, and BBC is BBC," Adam explained.

"Well that makes perfect sense," Ronan replied with an eye roll.

"Hey, I let you come to movie night, I can easily revoke that right," Blue piped up. "These are done." She grabbed an oven mitt and pulled out Adam's favorite peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

"Wow," Adam got up, weaving through boxes of Gansey's books and spelunking equipment. "Could he have more stuff?" He reached for one of the cookies and took a bite. "Wow Blue I love you."

"Hey I thought you loved me?"

"I love you too Ronan."

They curled up in a heap on the couch, plate of cookies, tub of popcorn, and Blue's famous strawberry banana smoothies in front of them. Adam leaned into Ronan, and held his hand, kissing his neck and collarbone from time to time in the sleepy, affectionate way he always did when they were watching movies.

Adam might've cried. Ronan definitely did, and Blue viciously pointed out the differences between book and movie. They didn't talk about leaving. They didn't talk about the future. Tonight it was enough to watch movies and fall asleep on each other's shoulders like nothing was changing.

And in the morning they went their separate ways. And later that week they said their real goodbyes, and Gansey cried his eyes out and wished them the best of luck and Adam hugged Blue for what felt like hours and they all gathered around Noah and petted his hair and held him. It was hard and it hurt like hell, but it was time.

And they left. And Adam went to Columbia. And Ronan got a job at an art gallery in the city creating dream object art. And Blue went to Ecuador and Peru and Costa Rica to study. And she and Gansey had their honeymoon in France and they moved back to Henrietta and were effortlessly happy. And Adam fell even more in love with Ronan, waking up beside him everyday, seeing the lights of the city in his eyes. And one day he got up the nerve and bought a ring, and when Ronan said yes Adam called Blue and spoke four words he knew she'd understand.

"Reader I married him."


End file.
